From The Pirate Bay Trial Day 05 Part 1 podradio from 2009-02-20. Im trying my best to balance between staying as close to what their saying as possible and still making it possible to comprehend. Not all of the people at this trial are skilled speakers and that means their speech isn’t fluent. They at times rephrase their sentances upon realizing they arent saying what they want to. So if you find stuff in here that doesn’t make sense chances are it didn’t make sense to me either.

The recording cuts in in the middle of a question by the Prosecutor. This is just at the beginning though, and Sunde it being questioned about the raid against PRQ and why there was a computer in the TPB server rack that he had access to.

P: … computer that belongs to you?

S: Not that belonged to me, but that I had access to.

P: Did your company, eh Hike, own the the computer?

The company was called HAIQ. High Availability Intelligence Quality. Roswall pronounces it “Hike”.

S: That could be correct, my company might have bought a computer that stood there as well.

P: Why was that computer in a rack belonging to TPB?

S: I bought a computer that I gave to The Piracy Bureau.

P: And what is The Piracy Bureau?

S: It’s a barely cohesive organization that discusses the Internet.

P: Discusses the Internet? Do you discuss any issues in particular concerning the Internet?

S: There have been discussions on a lot of topic surrounding the Internet. It’s more about… It’s mostly concerning the Internet as a whole I’d say.

P: Do you discuss copyright? File Sharing? At The Piracy Bureau’s web site?

S: Well, it’s important to keep in mind that the web site of The Piracy Bureau, is not the same thing as The Piracy Bureau as a group. There’s not a lot of cohesion in the group. A lot of people contribute in many different ways.

P: Is it correct to say, eh that you discuss, eh that parts of the Bureau of Piracy discusses copyright?

S: That’s accurate, more or less.

P: And they are critical of the way copyright is defined today?

S: That might be stretching things a bit too far. Many differing views are present within The Piracy Bureau.

P: Whats your position?

On the subject of copyright – note

S: Hmm, that’s tricky to answer, I’d say that it’s problematic.

P: In what way.

S: Well, the fact that we are here today. That’s a clear sign that it’s problematic.

P: Mhm

S: But generally speaking I can’t say that I like a lot of things covered by copyright. I’m more drawn to Open Source and Creative Commons licensed material.

P: I see.

S: So for me personally it’s a non-issue.

P: A non-issue?!

S: Yes

P: Ok. The first time I heard of you, you took the spotlight as the spokesman of The Pirate Bay. When did you become spokesman for The Pirate Bay?

S: It’s not an official title per say. It’s more a function that I have acquired, more or less, since no one wanted to step up themselves.

Sunde is asked to speak up. Sounds as someone from the press or something.

S: It more a role that no one else wanted. And I thought that it was important to talk about the importance of what The Pirate Bay does. Since no one else did it, I did it.

P: When did you become spokesman?

S: I can’t remember.

P: You can’t remember. … And you assumed this role on your own?

S: Yes, that’s the way it works. Theres a request for something, and if someone wants to handle it then that person takes care of it.

P: That’s a bit vague, “a request for something”? From who?

S: That differs from time to time, sometimes it’s a mail from a newspaper that have questions, or theres a question posted on the Internet in some chat channel asking if theres some one available for an interview. This is very typical for most the people i know on the Internet, we work this way.

P: What qualifies you to be spokesman for The Pirate Bay?

S: I’m not sure, I’d say that there are individuals that would perform the task better than me. But no one else wanted to do it.

P: Are you aware of the web page that The Pirate Bay has?

S: Say again?

P: Are you aware of the web site that The Pirate Bay has?

S: Yes I am.

P: Have you read anything on that web site?

S: Yes I have, parts of hit.

P: Even before the raid I mean.

S: Absolutely.

P: Are you aware of the text under the heading “About The Pirate Bay”? You can see it on page 1 in this evidence appendix.

Court: Then we would ask that Peter Sunde is given that appendix. … Thank you.

S: Yes, I’ve read this but in English.

P: Yes, but were aware of this?

S: Yes the English version, I can’t vouch for them being identical.

P: Have you viewed the content behind the link “Legal Threats”?

S: Yes, I’ve read some of that.

P: I see. So you where aware that the where rights holders that had complaints about you eh, The Pirate Bay’s site?

S: Just as aware as anyone else who have read the same correspondence.

P: How did you get to know Fredrik and Gottfrid?

S: I can’t recall where we met the very first time. I assume it was in some sort of chat room somewhere.

P: Mhm

S: It’s a long time ago, and difficult to answer.

P: Have you had contact within the network The Piracy Bureau?

S: Partly, The Pirate Bay was what got me interested in The Piracy Bureau as a group.

P: I didn’t catch that.

S: The Pirate Bay was what caught my attention, so that I learned about The Piracy Bureau. So I became involved that way.

P: From The Pirate Bay to The Piracy Bureau?

S: Yes

P: You can’t remember when you got to know, eh what context, you said chat. When did you meet for the first time IRL?

Yes, he said “IRL”.

S: We don’t really use the expression “IRL”. We use AFK, but regardless I can’t recall that either. … No, I don’t know the answer.

Court: Prosecutor, what does IRL mean?

P: “In Real Life”

S: We’re not so fond of that expression, we use AFK, which means away from keyboard. We consider the internet to be real.

P: *sighs* Then I guess I’m outdated then

S: Yes.

P: *Chuckles*

lol

P: This company, I pronounce the abbreviation hike, but maybe you pronounce it differently?

HAIQ again.

S: Yes, but your pronunciation is funny.

P: It’s funny yes. … What kind of company was that?

S: It was a consulting company that I started with what was then a good friend of mine. The idea was that we were to do IT consulting.

P: IT consulting in general, or were you specialized?

S: It ended up being pretty general, but in the beginnig the idea was that we wanted to work with large systems. I had previously worked a lot with x-ray systems and similar so that was our first idea.

P: X-ray systems? At hospitals?

S: Yes

P: Have you worked with performance optimization?

S: It’s part of most things I do as an IT consultant.

P: Now, in the world of IT, the same term can be used to mean different things. What does performance optimization mean to you?

S: That’s a difficult question. Making things work a little faster then they did before.

P: How do you accomplish that?

S: That depends on the type of application or service.

P: Have you done performance optimization for databases?

S: Yes I have.

P: Search engines?

S: Not a lot. I’ve worked at a company in norway that is a search engine. But I didn’t work with the search engine techonolgy there.

P: I see, so its more database administration?

S: I’ve done that as well. I’ve a multitude of things which makes it hard to pin down exactly what kind of work I do.

P: Do you have any experience in web design?

S: Only that I really bad at it.

P: Say again?

S: Only that I’m really bad at it. It’s a reoccurring problem with all my projects, that I’m not very skilled when it comes to design.

P: Daniel Oded, do you know him?

S: Yes …

P: Oded Daniel I mean.

S: Yes I know him.

P: When did you get to know him?

S: Somewhere around 2005-2006.

P: In what context?

S: He was a client with Gottfrid, and I had just met Gottfrid aswell, and he [Oded] had problems with some of his computers. And he wanted help.

P: What kind of problems?

S: I can’t recall that just like this, it’s too long ago.

P: I see. So Gottfrid was the one that introduced you two?

S: Yes, that’s correct.

P: Carl Lundström, do you know him?

S: Know him, not really. I’ve met him a few times before and a few times here.

P: In what context did you meet him before this?

S: I met him once when visiting Fredrik in Gothenburg, when Fredrik worked for him. And I ran into him once during a trip in the US.

P: What have you know about the operation of The Pirate Bay?

S: Thats a broad question, you will have to be more specific.

P: Yes, well, where the computers have been located for example.

S: This has been clearly stated on the Internet, so that I know. I also watched when they were moved from Gothenburg to Stockholm and such.

When the servers where moved there was a GPS tracker on the car so that people could see on a map on the web where the car was.

P: Have you been to their server hall?

S: Yes I have.

P: Seen the computers.

S: Yes I have.

P: have you been involved with buying hardware for The Pirate Bay?

S: No, I have not.

P: You have not…

S: No

P: Have you bought load balancers at any time?

S: No, I have not.

P: And you haven’t configured a load balancer either?

S: Not for The Pirate Bay at least.

P: For who have you done that?

S: Certian clients for example.

P: Like?

S: Oded, for example. I’ve also done it for Siemens.

P: So you know what load balancers are and how you use them?

S: Well, it’s not a clearly defined product, like you could know how to drive a car. It’s knowledge of how to build a system that balances load and there are several ways to accomplish this.

P: Exactly. To me this means you divide load between different computers, is that correct?

S: Yes, this is usually the case.

P: Have you helped Oded with any advertisement servers?

S: Yes I have.

P: And that was part of your responsibilities?

S: Yes. I wasn’t aware that it was a advertisement server, here I was working with the load balancing as a matter of fact. It doesn’t really matter what kind of server it is when it comes to load balancing.

P: Have you been involved with layout issues concerning The Pirate Bay?

S: No I haven’t.

P: Has any one asked for your opinion?

S: I can’t remember. A lot of people have probably been asked, but I can’t answer that.

P: So its possible?

S: Yes, but, asking me about stuff like that is really counterproductive.

P: Ok. … I’ll return to that.

Court: What does the prosecutor mean with “layout issues”.

P: I’ll return to that when I bring up this evidence appendix, but what it means is design of the graphical user interface.

Court: Alright, ok.

P: We have for several days now talked about this contract, this company contract concerning the founding of the company Random Media. Which is the company you were planing on starting. Have you signed such a contract?

S: Yes I have.

P: You have.

S: Yes.

P: Lets see if we can find it in your copy of the evidence.

…

P: So if we look at the signatures, on page 32, in the part that details emails.

P: Have you found the right page?

S: Yes

P: Are either of these signatures yours?

S: Yes

P: Which one?

S: Founder three.

Contract is in English and thus Sunde says &quot;Founder three&quot;

P: What does “Founder three” mean to you? The expression.

S: I’d say it means founder three, one of the ones that start the company.

Peter just translates into Swedish.

P: That’s to say, one of the founders of the company Random Media?

S: That was the idea yes.

P: Why where you one of the founders?

S: I was asked if I was interested in joining up and building new web services. And I found the prospect pretty interesting, but it wasn’t until there was a prospect of having a company that earned money that I felt that I could afford to join.

P: Mhm

S: When Oded wanted to fund a company so that we could create services together, I found the idea interesting. Since the risk to me personally wasn’t very big.

P: Did you read the contract?

S: I looked at it, but I felt that I didn’t understand all of it. It’s not my field, I’m no lawyer. So I looked at it and trusted Oded.

P: In you opinion, was The Pirate Bay a part of the operation of this company?

S: No, I was under the impression that the advertisement would be handled by this company. And that’s why Oded wanted to start a company.

P: So lets see, what did you say. Who was supposed to handle the sales of advertisement of what?

S: I was under the impression that the company was to handle the money from the ads on The Pirate Bay.

P: So Pirate Bay was going… Random media was intended to be a broker of sorts for the ads on The Pirate Bay?

S: Yes, that was my impression, that the company was to handle that.

P: And then you mentioned developing services. What kind of services?

S: The idea was to build web services that had the same crew as The Pirate Bay and the same or similar names. So for example Video Bay was one of our first intended projects.

P: So there was no intention to develop the business concept The Pirate Bay?

S: No that was not my impression.

P: Not the intention.

S: No

P: Would this change over time?

S: What?

P: The intention to develop The Pirate Bay as a business concept, was that something that became a goal later on?

S: I have not been part of anything like that.

P: You have not been part of anything like that?

S: No

P: What was your intended, i mean practically, in concrete terms, what was your intended role, function in random media.

S: Yes, well, the company was never founded. I haven’t received any shares at least. But the idea was that I was to participate in developing things.

P: Yes, but, if you’re part of a company you usually have skill or an area of expertize. What was yours?

S: Partly my language skills and I’m a fairly skilled programmer, perhaps not as good as Gottfrid or Fredrik.

Sunde speaks seven languages.

P: I see, and in what way did your language skills qualify you?

S: I can easily handle conversations in different situations.

P: Were you supposed to have external contacts with foreign clients?

S: No, there were no clients in the company, that wasn’t the purpose. The purpose was to build our own web pages.

P: But Random was to sell ad space on Pirate Bay?

S: That was Oded part, what he brought to the company. This was how the conpany was supposed to get the money to build the web pages and pay wages.

P: So that was Oded’s part?

S: Yes

P: I understand. … If you turn back to page 30, just a few pages back. … Item 3.5 emission of shares to “host owner”. Did you observe this clause when you signed the contract?

S: Yes, and my understanding was that PRQ would have an extra part of the company and Oded’s company was to have an additional part in this company.

P: Why wouldn’t the contract then say PRQ?

S: I did not reflect on that at all. Perhaps the idea was to decide that at a later stage, and Fredrik and Gottfrid where to create a new company for that purpose.

P: I understand. … If I recall correctly from talking to Fredrik, then he mention categories. So that when you upleaded a .torrent you could pick a category. Have you been part of designing such categories?

S: No. There had been complaints on chat forums that the categories on Pirate Bay weren’t very good. And then some people wanted to give suggestions on how to make it better. But that never took off either.

P: So you had contact with people? Via mail or chat that had feedback?

S: There where a few of us that had feedback to give.

P: Did you take any action to change the categories?

S: No

P: Not in any way?

S: No, there was a desire to create categories for genres and such, but it never happened. We couldn’t agree on what would be good categories to have.

P: Have you worked on the search function on Pirate Bay?

S: No I have not.

P: Not in any way?

S: No

P: Have Oded at any time requested you opinion on cooperation with streaming sites?

S: I can’t recall.

P: I could be that way?

S: You need to keep in mind that we have sent many thousands of mails to each other. So recalling all contacts you’ve had isn’t possible.

P: Could be that way, you don’t know.

S: Correct.

P: Have you had contact with advertisers? Or companies that sell ads?

S: I managed the contact with East Point for Oded, because he had difficulties communicating with them.

P: In what way did he have communication problems?

S: He’s very hot headed and that doesn’t work well in Sweden.

P: What was the specific problem with East Point?

S: They couldn’t pay on time.

P: Ok, and Oded couldn’t get them to shape up?

S: Oded tried to send his invoices to them for an extended period, but that didn’t produce any results. So asked me to contact them since I have an old class mate that works for them.

P: And you did this?

S: Yes

P: Who was this class mate?

S: An old friend by the name of Rickard.

P: Rickard. … What was the outcome of you talking to Rickard?

S: He spoke to his bosses and then we solved the invoicing part.

P: How did you solve it?

S: I sent the invoices from my company instead. They wanted an invoice from Sweden.

P: So all invoices and transactions that this generates and the invoices that are part ot the evidence here are made by you.

S: Yes, that’s correct.

P: And according to this text it concerns ads on piratebay.org?

S: Yes.

P: What kind of contract did East Point have with The Pirate Bay?

S: I’m not aware of any such contract. I believe the contract was between East Point and Oded.

P: Ok, was there any contract detailing the dividing of the revenue from the ad sales?

S: That’s outside the scope of my knowledge.

P: You have no knowledge of that. … This money that entered Hikes account, where did they go?

P: Have you signed any contract or made any deals with any advertiser concerning advertisement on The Pirate Bay?

S: I have not.

P: You have not, ok. … Have you at any time suggested to the others that pirate bay should sell the statistics from the site?

S: That was a suggestion of mine.

P: You had such a suggestion. Could you tell us some more of the ideas behind that?

S: I thought that the statistics that circulated in newspapers and such was mostly concerned with sale. Such as CD’s and similar, and i thought that Internet downloads was interesting statistics. So I wanted it to reach people some how. The basic idea was to make the statistics public some how.

P: To make it public? ok, but you were going to charge money for it?

S: Yes well, I thought that it was a way for Pirate Bay to earn at least some money. From what I had gathered there wasn’t alot of money in The Pirate Bay.

P: There wasn’t?

S: No.

P: How had you come under this impression?

S: It’s what I had heard from Gotfrid and Fredrik.

P: Had you had any conversation with Oded concerning this?

S: Not about The Pirate Bays economy specifically.

P: I see. Have you suggested that The Pirate Bay should have a telephone hotline for support?

S: I believe so, that is part of the evidence I think.

P: Exactly. It’s part of the evidence. And isn’t that outside the responsibilities of a mere spokesperson?

S: Yeah, but a lot of people have ideas and feedback. Someone had the idea and told me about it and I thought that it was a good idea.

P: Mmm

S: I don’t find that strange at all.

P: No. Have you worked with the database for The Pirate Bay?

S: No I have not.

…

P: Oded has sent a lot of Revenue Reports.

S: Mmm

P: Have you received such reports?

S: I likely have. It’s not something that I even look at.

P: I see. You looked them over?

S: No, Oded sends a lot of email and I probably don’t read even half of it.

P: I see. Why were they sent to you?

S: I think Oded wanted better communication with Gottfrid and Fredrik and was aware that I knew them. So he was trying to take a more active part in helping them.

P: It had nothing to do with this company contract for Random Media?

S: I have no memory of that. Since Random Media was never created and there never was any money going into or out of the company.

P: I see. … You never reflected over why these revenue reports where sent to you?

S: Oded is strange, he sends strange emails and I’ve received emails that were in no way intended for me. That’s just the way he is.

P: Normally revenue reports are company secrets are they not?

S: If you consider it as business, maybe, but I doubt Oded sees it this way. I think it’s his way of getting people to take a more active part.

P: Mhm … Did you travel to Israel in may of 2006?

S: I can’t recall. My sense of time is really bad as well.

Fredrik Neij commented on his sense of time earlier.

P: You have no recollection of that.

S: No, but if there anything in the evidence that says I did, then it’s very likely so. I have been to Israel several times.

P: Mhm. Have you together with Oded met companies that considered buying ad space on The Pirate Bay?

S: It wasn’t my impression that they wanted to buy ad space on The Pirate Bay, but I have met clients with Oded.

P: In Israel?

S: Yes.

P: And why did you participate in those meetings?

S: Because I was there visiting, as a guest of Odeds, and he simply wanted to bring me to these meetings.

P: You never asked or wondered why?

S: We had other projects together. It didn’t feel strange at all that he brought me to his meetings. I was after all his guest.

P: And you never thought of going to the beach?

S: I did that as well, a lot.

P: But at times you participated.

S: Yes some of the days we were at meetings and others he only had one or two meetings that I didn’t participate in or had any interest in.

P: Sure. Now I was planning on covering some of these, lets see, email correspondences. The evidence under the tab email. I would like to hear your comments on the meaning of this. Page 5. And actually it’s the middle row here that’s of interest.

S: Mhm

P: This is an email from Oded to Gottfrid. And it says that Oded is going to transfer money to Gottfrid as soon as possible. And that Gottfrid can get Peter to buy load balancers.

S: Mhm?

P: What does this mean?

S: I believe he wanted me to buy a load balancer since he had problems with his computers.

P: And this was to Oded?

S: Say again?

P: This was for one of Odeds computers?

S: Yes, he has many different computers.

P: Did Oded have The Pirate Bay ads on an ad server at his place?

S: I couldn’t say. He has had several different ad networks.

P: And thats why he needed load balancers?

S: Yes, like I said he had many different computers and a lot of large and resource heavy ad networks and other stuff.

P: Could any of those servers have been an ad server for The Pirate Bay?

S: Answering that would be very speculative. I don’t know.

P: And the contract has already been covered, so I’ll skip … that. …

*Roswall searches through his papers*

P: I think I’ll skip that. And you already answered that. … Page 35.

Unknown: What tab?

P: It’s the same tab it’s always been. … It’s an email from Oded to Gottfrid, you and Fredrik.

S: Mhm

P: And this details that Oded is looking forward to arranging a meeting &quot;for the layout&quot;.

Roswall quotes the email in English.

P: And cut to the decision so that the layout can go to implementation.

S: Mhm

P: My question is thus, what is oded talking about here?

S: I believe this was in connection to our plans to build a site that was to be called Video Bay.

P: What was the name?

S: Video Bay.

P: A spin off of The Pirate Bay?

S: Not quite, it was supposed to be a Youtube clone. That was the idea.

P: Didn’t you say that you where very bad at layout?

S: Yes. This is common knowledge.

P: Why where, why would you, why were you participating in a meeting like that then?

You can hear from the tone of Roswalls voice that he’s getting excited here.

S: I was one of the programmers for the Video Bay project. And to do that you need to know the details of the layout so you can write the code for it.

P: Where images should be placed and similar?

S: No more like how you implement the graphics and such.

Sunde isn’t rattled at all by the trap. So Roswall opens up a new line of questioning.

P: Page 42. … This is an email from Oded to you. With copies to among others Gottfrid. All this email has been found at Gottfrid’s.

S: Yes.

P: The email says that you have had contact with Oded on MSN. That’s the chat function. It concerned whether or not Oded was happy with the new design. Which he wasn’t. &quot;Not Perfect&quot;.

S: Exactly.

P: What was it he was displeased with

S: I have no idea. This was something we discussed back and forth and we had asked a guy to make the layout. A Swedish guy I knew.

P: “We had asked”? Who is we?

S: Me and Oded had asked a guy to make the design.

P: You had been part of asking someone to what? Write HTML code?

S: I can’t recall exactly what he did, if it was HTML or just an image of what is was supposed to look like or so.

P: Mhm, yes. Page 43. Here Oded writes to you. And if you read the first line and look at the attachments you can see that here Oded has suggestions on changes to the site. And if we look at Page 44 and 45 it shows among other things that this concerns The Priate Bay. And the circled areas are for once not one by me but instead this is what the image looked like when you got it.

S: Yes, that’s what it looks like.

P: Oded has opinions on the interface. Why would he send this to you?

S: Because I work with the guy in many other projects, and we thought that he was very good. So Oded wanted to use him to make changes to The Pirate Bay.

P: So you were supposed to relay this material to the intended recipient?

S: Yes.

P: Page 47. You are writing to Oded. Oded earlier wrote to you and said that he wanted look at two BitTorrent sites. This is detailed by the lower part of the message. And you reply that this isn’t something for you since you will be making genres for TPB this week, this is my top priority right now with TPB. Deadline this Friday to decide what genres we should have.

S: Mhm

P: This indicates that you have actually worked on the categories on TPB?

S: Yes, well, me and some other users that thought that the wasnt any kind of categorization system on The Pirate Bay. So I had recieved suggestions and talked to these people and we wanted to make a better suggestion then what was already available. And this still hasn’t been changes as far as I know.

S: I use the Pirate Bay like many others and thought it was very annoying when posting my music that I couldn’t detail what kind of music it was. And many other users thought the same thing.

P: But the question was, was this an initiative of your own or were you asked to?

S: This is how the Internet works for the most part. If you want to change something somewhere, no matter what it is, you suggest changes. And since many others thought the same we decided to put forth a suggestion.

P: And what was the purpose of changing the categories.

S: I wanted to be able to post my own music and label it as Techno so that people could find it. You still can’t do that which is very disappointing.

P: So have I understood you correctly if I say enhance the functionalty?

S: I would probably …

P: Sorry! Enhance the user friendliness?

S: You could say that. I don’t think … I didn’t think that pirate bay was particularly user fiendly. And many agree with me there.

P: Page 50. Oded writes an email to you. Copies to Gottfrid among others. Dear Peter, if you happen to be working on the search function, it would be good to sort the files based on their health situation, I don’t know what that means…

S: Nor do I.

P: But what does this mean? Why would you get this email?

Another trap. And Sunde is still isn’t rattled.

S: I believe this has to do with The Video Bay Project.

P: But you said earlier that you didn’t work with search functions.

S: No, not on… I mean, “search function”, that could be something as simple as making a query in a database. In a small project that works well, and that would be a form of search function, but not one I would call a real search function.

P: Have you or have you not worked with search functions.

S: Once again, a search function is to query something in a database it’s a difficult task to pin down the precise point where a search function becomes a specialized search function.

P: Page 52. No wait, we want to start with page 51. This is a mainly the lower part of the email where Oded sends a message to the list random media. List means several. A pre defined list of recipients?

S: Yes

P: And if I’m reading this right then, and you are welcome to read this to verify, Oded says hes spoken to two the owners of two sites noted there. This is a professional at streaming. And to me streaming is live TV over the Internet. Eh live material transmitted over the Internet.

S: Eh, yes, if you simplify.

P: Simplified. Oded further suggests a cooperation with this person. You, or we he says actually, will invest in the servers, and this other person will update the content. You will supply a Pirate Bay skin, that is to say the graphical interface. And you will advertise this site and the revenue will be divided 70-30 or 66-33. … Have I understood this correctly?

S: It appears so.

P: And then the recipients are asked for their opinions on this.

S: Yes, it appears so.

P: Page 52. Just below the middle. Its a mail from you to the list. And here you arent so pleased with thi interface.

S: No it looked really bad.

P: That you could make a better design this was obvious.

S: Yes, we had access to people that where skilled at design.

P: And then you ask who would get 70 and who gets 30%?

S: Yes.

P: And if I’m understanding this correctly you want a larger share than 70%.

S: Yes.

P: You have opinions here on the dividing of income?

S: Yes for this project, absolutely.

P: I see.

The prosecutor is looking for his next piece of evidence to ask Sunde about.

S: The prosecutor perhaps wants to know which project this is about?

P: Ah yes I could ask that. Which project is this concerning?

S: It concers Video Bay

P: Video Bay?

S: Yes

P: And this was part of the operations in Random Media?

S: This was intended to be a part of random media yes.

P: Page 53. Fourth paragraph from the top. This is an email from Oded to you. This is a list of concerns that Oded want’s to bring to your attention. But this particular paragraph talks about search driven advertisesers. What is that? I have no idea what that would be.

S: Well, the way I understand it it’ advertisement based on searches.

P: And it goes on to say that this person has approved you. And Oded says that you will be given contact information so you can talk to their engineers.

S: Yes

P: Did you receive the contact list, or information?

S: I assume so, this was a really long time ago so I can’t remember. It’s four years ago.

P: Did you talk to these engineers?

S: I can’t recall if I did or not. I talk to a lot of people.

P: What project does this concern?

S: I assume that this is also Video Bay.

P: Last paragraph, just above best regards. There it says that it’s important that ads are placed correctly and requests your help with this.

S: Yes, like I said, he wanted me to prod Gottfrid and Fredrik.

Court: I didn’t catch that.

S: He wanted me to prod Gottfrid and Fredrik.

P: Get them moving.

S: Yes, I think they have had some communication problems all three of them.

P: Yes. Page 56. Oded sends an email to Gottfrid. And here we can see that Gottfrid has previously replied to a mail that Oded sent to him first. And from what I can understand is in regards to a “General Tag”, an add.

S: mmm

P: And this is a client that alot of ads…

S: I have no knowledge…

P: with you. … Ok. … Oded want’s some iformation frow the client, from what I can tell. What countries the ad should be visible in, how often and so on. Am I understanding this correctly?

S: I assume its correct the way you described it.

P: And we can see here thats there alot of brackets, and after that theres text without brackets that Gottfrid thus has written.

S: mmm

P: &quot;Only .se. Put him on the default rotation untill the details are done&quot;. And then theres a parenthesis saying &quot;He made a deal with Peter&quot;.

S: mmm

P: What does this mean? “He made a deal with Peter”.

S: You will have to ask Gottfrid. I have not made any such deals with anyone.

P: You have never made a advertisment contract?

S: I have not.

P: Not even with the other video sites, the other …

S: No, this is the kind of things that Oded has done. So I have not had to care about it at all. I doesn’t interest me.

P: I see. … You’re not interested?

S: No, I find it boring. I prefer programming stuff.

P: Page 58. We talked about this earlier, sales of statistics from “The Bay”.

S: Mmm

P: Are we talking about The Pirate Bay.

S: I would assume so.

P: Mmm. … And there’s a suggestion here what categories, groups so to speak. … And the, below the middle there’s a list, a-b-c. &quot;Pros with the idea&quot;

S: Mmm

P: “We’ll earn some, but perhaps not alot of money”

S: Mmm

P: But earlier you said that this wasn’t about money.

S: No, I wasn’t why this interested me, but I wanted to entice Oded to push for the idea on his own.

P: “Making the brand stornger”?

S: Mmm

P: “And getting free advertisement”.

S: Yes, getting advertisment as in commercials. To make it known.

P: But that means that you consider advertisement and it’s effects.

S: Well effects of advertisment…

P: Aswell as for the purpose of commercials. Being known on the web.

Roswall isn’t making sense.

S: I think that The Pirate Bay does something important, and obviously I, aswell as all others that feel strongly about the Pirate Bay, there are many millions that do, think that it’s important that the site has a certain position.

P: Oded, was he a skilled techincian, IT-technician.

S: No, he wasn’t.

P: An ordinary user. Someone like me?

S: I can’t campare you skill level.

P: No, you can’t.

Roswall’s trying to contain a laugh.

P: The email on page 59. … From Oded to, among others, you, two different email addresses to you, aswell as Gottfrid. The subject is “Search Funktion Related Question”. From dec 27th 2005. And from what I can tell this concerns, it’s to you and Gottfrid, &quot;As the inventor of the search engine&quot;. Now since Oded wasn’t very tech savvy, I will asumme he didn’t invent any search engine.

S: It could be his dry wit aswell, but no.

P: And it concerns “The Bay”, this much is clear.

S: Mmm

P: He ins’t satisfied with the functionalty of the search engine on “The Bay”. Why would he send this to you?

S: I think it’s still because he wants me to get more involved in making people do things. It’s a reoccuring problem that things don’t get done.

P: Has it always worked this way? When Fredrik and Gottfrid or others involved with the project aren’t working Oded turns to you?

S: He tried that, untill he realized I had the same problem as Fredrik and Gottfrid. Neither of us do alot of work, and are very, confused, all three of us.

P: Have you had any position of authority within the Swedish branch?

S: Swedish branch of what?

P: The Pirate Bay.

S: I haven’t been involved in The Pirate Bay, so I can’t have had any position of authority either.

P: But from what I can tell from the answers you have given so far so when things aren’t moving. Oded wants things to happen on The Pirate Bay and they don’t, then he turns to you. Is that correct?

S: During a short peroid of time he did that. The emails are from a short period of time aswell. And by now he’s given up on that. He felt desperate, I recall having a conversation with him on the subject, since Gottfrid and Fredrik didn’t pull their weight.

Roswall starts looking through his papers.

P: We’ve already talked about he telephone hotline, so no need to cover that again. … Page 67. This is from Gottfrid to Oded. Oded is answering a question he sent earlier. He asked if TiAMO is the dude that made the database. &quot;db&quot; means database right?

S: I can’t tell which project this concerns. We done alot of projects together, and it’s impossible for me to tell from this which project they are talking about.

P: But just to be clear, you do have a certain competence with databases?

S: Yes I do.

P: Page 70. It’s an email to you from Oded, aswell as Gottfrid and Fredrik. And in here it says that you have talked to Eastpoint and that they’ve decided to raise the price on ads on “The Bay”. … So you have had contact with Eastpoint concerning the sale of ad space?

S: Like I said, they refused to talk to Oded in the end since he’s pain. And I’m sure they will confirm this. And this meant I became the middleman in phone conversations and similar untill the cooperation ended.

P: How did you react to the fcat that you could charge more for the ad space?

S: I wasn’t the one charging more for the ads, I only relayed to Oded and the others that they would be payed more.

P: “The others”?

S: Mmm

P: You weren’t expecting and financial compensation at all from this?!

S: No.

P: Completely voluntary work?

S: Yes.

P: Ok…

To me Roswall sounds so dissapointed here.

P: Page 71. Same thing here, an email from Oded to you. It concerns minor changes to page, that’s to say the graphical interface. And on the next page, page 72, there’s a suggestion from Oded and he want’s your input.

S: Yes, he appears to want to, let’s see…

P: And since you aren’t very interested in graphic, know alot about, layout, layout and similar. Why, why would he ask you, this is the second time already.

Sunde gets annoyed.

S: Yes, but as I’ve said, he sends insane amounts of emails and it’s hard for me to tell you why he sent each and every email. But I assume that he sent this to me because he want’s me to relay this to, to a guy called Tobias that helped us with the layout. With all the layouts on all the projects.

P: Tobias? Was that someone you employed?

S: No, I wouldn’t say that. I’ve contracted him for a few of my own projects, but employed, I haven’t empolyed…

P: Not employed in The Pirate Bay?

S: I have no idea if they hired him.

P: What about Random Media?

S: I have no recollection of any one employing anyone in random media. I can’t recall a single transaction ever to be made at all in Random Media.

P: I see.

Roswall is looking through his papers again.

P: I’m skipping that … And that to, we’ve talked about it enough already. … Let’s look at page 85. Email from Oded to Carl Lundström, to Fredrik, to Gottfrid and a copy to you.

S: Mmm

P: Here we can see that Oded and you have met with a company called Ad Agency.

S: Mmm

P: And I interpret this to say that there’s a preliminary agreement saying that this company is going to display casino and poker ads during one month on The Pirate Bay. And they will pay 100 000USD for this and the following monday they will get a contract.

S: Mmm

P: Have I understood this correctly.

S: I don’t think this has to do with The Pirate Bay either. It must be in regards to all of Odeds sites or something. I can’t see why anyone would pay that much money to have ads on The Pirate Bay.

P: But it’s true that you were in Isreal?

S: Yes.

P: You’ve said so yes. And you were at meetings while there.

S: Yes.

P: I see. Thank you. Then I have no more questions.

Court: Do the complainants have any questions?

D: I have quite a few questions.

Peter Danowsky who represents IFPI.

C: Ok.

The judge asks if they should take a break. After a short discussion the decission is made to have a 15 minute recess.

A new report from the content industry surfaced a few days ago. TorrentFreak demolishes it. As per usual the study mixes the words piracy and courterfitting in an attempt to brand all infringers as terrorists and gang or mafia members. Applying this to other real world numbers is hilarious.

TPB recently reported that they every week are accessed by roughly 2 million unique(sv) Swedish IPs. Accounting for people that are all on the same IP, people that access the site from different IPs every time and all the people that doesn’t even use TPB the number of file sharers in Sweden still ballpark 2 million. Not bad for a country of only 9 million.

But this means that Sweden has roughly 2 million terrorists/mafia members!

During the trial a group of Swedish law sociologists published a report stating that 75% of Swedes between the age of 15 and 25 didn’t view the law as a legitimate reason to stop file sharing. 1(sv)2(sv)3(sv). Assuming that pretty much all of these are terrorists isn’t that far fetched…

But if we stop mixing the words up for a minute we arrive at something even funnier. If big content is actually concerned about all these terrorist and criminals then online file sharing is everything they could have hoped for. Sites like The Pirate Bay drives the DVD pirates out of their market. You can’t sell DVDs like that in Sweden or on any market where there’s a decent broadband penetration. Steal This Film part 1 has some interviews with counterfeiters IIRC.

That’s how long we have to wait for the verdict. It’s far too long for me. It’s totally a roll of the die, even if each of the sides in court are 100% completely utterly confident that their side will prevail. The Pirate Bay crew have been collecting most of the legal and media points during these two weeks, and we seen the prosecution behave like assholes on several occasion. Slandering Roger Wallis and shouting at the judge being their gravest missteps. But the political nature of the case makes it impossible to predict.

Even worse though is that April 17th may yield nothing more than a “We will have to request a statemt from the EU”. Delaying the verdict from this instance about 2 years. After that there are two more instances to go through. It’s very likely that this issue will be done with politically and socially long before the case is settled.

The defense unanimously told the court that the case the prosecutor has put forth is utter rubbish. That it in no way ties either of the defendants to any of the acts of copyright infringement covered in the case. They can’t even legally prove that any copyright infringement took place in Sweden, let alone that TPBs servers where used in any way. Based on the lack of evidence it’s impossible to convict anyone of “assisting making available”. Their claims that 90% of the content on TPB is infringing copyright isn’t proven and the only thing on trial here seems to be the technology. The attitudes and political views of the defendants are not grounds for a guilty verdict. Also, since the core of the Internet is links to other information, simply pointing to something can not be sufficient to be found guilty in a court of law.

The defense did point out the math error of the prosecution yesterday, where 4 banners turned into 64, multiplying the estimated money earned by 16. And made a point of telling the court that even if the prosecution couldn’t get the source code to the tracker from the police, which the prosecution complained about yesterday. That source code is freely available on TPB for download.

Some time was spent on whether paragraph 16 or 18 of the European e-commerce directive is the applicable one. Paragraph 16 says that a relayer of information is not responsible for the content. 18 says that a storage service is responsible for the content they store. In my opinion TPB steers clear of both. The torrent contains no copyright protected content and the only thing they transmit is metadata.

The defense also reminds the court that when the prosecution brought witnesses they brought CEOs that had little to no understanding of the technology and had done no research on their own. Nor had they read and comprehended any independent research and spent their time on the witness stand pushing their political views.

IFPI ceo John Kennedy even told the court that his wife keeps him away from the car because he’s that technically challenged.

When the prosecution was faced with an independent researcher who is also a practicing composer, former board member of a collection society for musicians, member of the governments IT council and professor emeritus at one of Sweden’s foremost technical universities, they resort to slander.

The defense also points out the enormous consequences the trial will have on the Internet if their clients are found guilty. The Internet as we know it would have to be closed down if you are legally responsible of everything you link to.

Closing arguments. Nothing really surprising here except maybe that the prosecutor didn’t ask for the maximum two years of prison time. Prosecutor Roswall claims that there are 64 ad spaces on the site and at an estimated 3500sek/week The Pirate Bay has earned over 10 000 000sek. Problem with that is that there are only 4 banner spaces(sv). So income from banners is 1/16th of that. And since hardware costs are around 80 000sek/month (estimate by anakata at the press conference before the trial) on average that makes TPB a loss generating project.

But then again these lawyers don’t care about the money. It’s not going to the artists anyways. All they want is to label TPB illegal so they can strong arm ISPs to block it. Effectively shutting creators that take advantage of radically shorter distance between creator and consumer that file sharing allows, out of their most important market.

Interesting to note as well is that Swedish media is talking less and less about different outfits protecting the rights of the artists. Instead they word it as protecting the rights holder. This is of course welcome.

Much much sadder, but not at all unexpected, was that the IPRED over implementation was passed into law last week. A quick run down on how this works:

Rights holders are granted special permission to store sensitive personal information about civilians. Data that is otherwise strictly protected by law.

A rights holder goes to the court and claims that a certain IP is infringing on their pattern privileges and the court forces the ISP to hand over the identity behind the IP. Swedish police cannot do this, so the copyright lobby are given more rights than any other authority in Sweden.

The copyright lobby can now freeze your bank accounts and seize your property. What you need to realize here is that they will always target the owner of the account at the ISP. So the actual file sharer could be anyone at this point.

Next they will raid your house, seizing any and all computer and IT related equipment and anything else they can motivate the need for. Have private pictures of your bf/gf/spouse, well tough luck. Unusual sexual preferences? Political views? Diaries? Anonymous blogs? Accounting for your home business? The lobby will seize it all and not only for the one named on the Internet account. Every member of that family will get their lives seized.

Now they will hand you an extortion letter. It will demand that you hand over a large sum of money or they will drag you to court and sue you for many times this amount. With no computer, no cell phones, no access to your accounts you will be given 10 days or so to reply.

If you for some reason choose to stand your ground you situation is as follows: You will have to go to court and prove your innocence. There will be no lawyers with experience in pattern privileges cases available to you since they are most likely being used by or have been used by the copyright lobby. Since this is civil law your insurance will most likely not cover your expenses. And what money you have is frozen.

If you loose you have to pay for the expenses of the lobby. You will also be forced to pay for ads in newspapers detailing the crimes you were just convicted of.

This new law allows for everything detailed above. You are at the mercy of the whims of the rights holders. And considering their track records in the US, UK and Denmark they will use any legal tool they have access to with full force.

MEPs try to sooth us with promises that rights holders wont behave like this because it would generate badwill. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry here. They aren’t interested in avoiding badwill. They want us to fear them, so we stop developing our own society, shut up and empty our wallets in their laps.

The gift tracking site crumbled under the pressure, last I saw was just over 40 000sek. But flowers are pouring in. Problem is the Wallis’ are out of wases (this sounds awfully familiar). Plz to send moar wases!

-Update4:

If you are reading this by now the Wallis’ got flowers, candy, teddy bears and wases for over 53 000sek. It’s more than they can handle and theres no need for more.

Haven’t been able to post for a few days. Back to back shifts at work and a busy weekend. I started translating the testimony with Peter Sunde and have done 40 mins of that so far. 6000 words and counting. I have a few days off now so I hope to complete a number of posts before Monday.

First some awesome news. The Pirate Party of Sweden is steadily increasing it’s number of members and currently we’re at 11042 members making us larger then both The Left party and The Greens at 10700 and 9110 members respectively! Next party to beat is The Liberal party at 17799. Here you can look(sv) at a Swedish wiki detailing party membership numbers over time. Do note the steady decline in numbers across the board among all parties in the parliament. (columns s, m, c, kd, fp, v, mp) Dare I hope for 17800 before the EU election?

To day the court heard testimonies from Roger Wallis, a classical composer, professor of media technology and electronic arts at KTH, member of the governments IT advisory commission and former board member of the collection society STIM. I love this guy. No seriously! Let’s look at some quotes!

Defense attorney Peter Althin (defends Peter Sunde) asks:

A: Your interest for file sharing, how did that come to be? Is it a result of the research you have done?

W: A little bit of both. I’m a practicing composer, mostly for my grand kids, but I’m also a researcher and have always been fascinated by new technology. It started with the compact cassette of the 80’s. We had the very same debate at that time, they wanted to stop it.

A: Who are they?

W: The music and movie industry, the pushed the case all the way to the supreme court in the US but lost in the betamax case… They also dragged the Hamstradt (sp?) Amstrad case all the way to the supreme court in England. And what fascinated me with the cassette technology was how it revolutionized the ability for anyone to cheaply participate in the music industry. We got cassettes with multiple tracks which mean that you didn’t have to record at Abbey Road, Beatles Studio, to record music. You could record in your basement, and I became very interested in how that effected the range of products on the market. And when I saw file sharing and the file sharing technology emerge… I wanted to know what benefits it had. Historically, every shift in technology has prompted the same reaction from the established companies. Trying to stop it and demonising the people using the new technology. And the best example of this that has really interested me was the introduction of radio in the US In the 1920’s. Back then the note publishers were the big ones and they attempted to ban all music on radio with the argument that if we can listen to music on the radio then the value of copyright will collapse and no one will write music any more.

…

A: Is there any relation between downloads and lost sales?

W: That depends on what kind of sales you are referring to. There’s a clear relation between downloads and sales of concert tickets. It’s true that CD sales have declined but it’s also impossible to pin a specific number on the decline.

<Wallis digresses from the question>

A: Is there a direct causality on effects of downloads and lost sales? Is 10 000 downloads the same amount of lost sales?

W No, there’s a multitude of factors that effects the decline in sales. The most important reason is that the CD isn’t a practical form of distribution when people want their music on their computers or on MP3. That’s the most important reason. There are other things competing for your wallet. Cell phones, video, DVD, video games. Many of the reports, I hear a few being mentioned here, Libevitz and a whole slew of other reports that all show conflicting results. Most of these where made between 2002 and 2006. And what we learned from Music Lessons which was done 2005 to 2007/2008 explain some of the problems with analyzing this field. Many assumed that file sharers where a homo-gene group who where only driven by a desire to get stuff gratis. Our research, which we have done with The World Internet Institute who conduct research all over Europe, was that there are many types of file sharers. One group, we call them the Enthusiasts, download illegally, but buy more cinema tickets, more tracks on iTunes and so on. They are the the core of the fans that build the market, they go to concerts more. Another large group that we named Free Riders, are the same kind of people that home taped in the 80’s and gave to their friends and that never bought anything. The problems they caused was compensated for by a tax on blank media. But, if you arent sure wich of these groups you are looking at your results will be unreliable.

This guy has done so much research into the subject that IFPI lawyer Peter Danowsky is terrified. So terrified that he doesn’t dare poke at Wallis’ arguments with a ten foot stick. Instead he attempts to discredit Wallis by insinuating that he is a part time hobbyist. I can’t be sure how the court will view his attack on Wallis but a reporter in the court room was reported to say “they just lost the case“(sv).

An epic moment came when Anti-Piracy Bureau lawyer Henrik Pontén asks Wallis where to find his CV. Wallis reply was basically: omfg l2google!

Wallis was understandably irritated. The music industry likes to ridicule him and a few days ago Henrik Pontén had called different researchers at KTH and asked questions about Wallis’ credibility. Most touching of all was when at the end, the court asked what he asked of the court as compensation.

“Flowers for my wife.”

Even though this all happened today she’s already gotten flowers from someone thanking Wallis for finally bringing the artists into the debate. EFnet has a newly formed IRC channel for people who wish to send flowers to Wallis’ wife. Last time the netizens of Sweden had a flower campaign we sent so many flowers that the Swedish Parliament ran out of vases to put them in. I doubt the result from this will be anything less than astounding.